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Seraphina felt herself hesitate. A new gown that was neither too big nor badly torn for Christmas was tempting and she was so very tired of wearing what she had.
‘I could take the cost of the fabric from your wages.’
His suggestion made her blush because she knew that such a thing would be far and above any money she was earning as a governess.
Yet temptation lingered. Reaching for her grandmother’s single pearl on the chain around her neck, she slipped it off so that it lay in the palm of her hand. She had always worn this piece since Elizabeth had died and it was undeniably precious. Yet reality beckoned, too, in the shabby dress she had on, the seams beneath her left arm so frayed she could no longer repair them.
‘If I put this down as a surety for the sum of the fabric, I could accept your offer.’
He shook his head. ‘I have no need for it.’
Her gaze met his, amber-gold in the daylight, drawing her in. She felt her body respond to his glance, a throb of want dancing like flame warmth across her skin. When he stepped back the disappointment stung.
‘You look like your mother. Did you know that?’
Her heart thumped at the question, coming as if on the surge of desire. ‘Were you her lover, then?’
Discomfort shadowed his face. ‘How much did you comprehend about Elizabeth’s life?’ His voice was wary.
‘Enough to realise she was unhappy with my father. Enough to see her spend hours getting ready at night and not return until the morning.’ She had never told anyone that before, but it did not feel disloyal here to speak of such things. The duke had known Mama, after all, and he had helped her when others had turned away. Besides, it might have been he who kept her occupied nightly.
‘People deal with an unhappy relationship in different ways and for Elizabeth it was through enjoying the company of my cousin before he died. Terence. His name was Terence.’
Relief allowed the breath she hadn’t realised she was holding to escape. ‘The same as your son?’
‘Aye, he was named after him. We were brought up together like brothers and the last thing he said to me was “look after Lizzy”.’
‘So you gave her money when Papa would not?’
‘The bills were piling up and your father had refused to pay them, but in the end it was not such largesse she needed at all …’
Seraphina understood what he was saying. Her mother had gone to Moreton and raced her horse fast across the track above the cliffs. Fast enough for it to lose its footing and for Elizabeth to be transported to the place her lover had already been taken to? Other things became explained as well: her father’s lack of grief, an escalating gambling habit and his anger.
‘Thank you for telling me the truth.’
He smiled and held her gaze, just the two of them here in the breakfast room, the day drawing into coldness and the new snow falling outside. Buffered by nature and locked in by the forces of winter as it laid its arms about the countryside in a white blanket of cold, Seraphina felt … altered.
Life at Moreton had been fraught and uncertain, the arguments and anger constant. She had always been frightened. She knew this absolutely because here, at the castle, she wasn’t, the disquietude of her home life replaced by hopes and promises drawing her in as she anticipated what was to come.
But there was something today in his gaze that was hidden, and when he began to speak she knew that the details of the past few weeks had caught up with her.
‘Yesterday in Maldon I saw a copy of The Times. The man you mentioned, Ralph Bonnington, is telling the world that you struck him when he offered you all the assistance and support that your father had not.’
‘Assistance? My God.’ She stood as she said it, a sick feeling of horror slicing into disbelief. ‘He said that?’ Anger darkened her vision. ‘I hit him on the head with a silver ewer because he was trying to …’ She could not go on.
Trey came closer and reached out, putting her hand into his, the gentleness felt in the action making her heart ache. ‘The man is a charlatan and a cheat—as no one knows where you are yet it seems you are safe.’
Relief flooded through her and her fingers clutched his. She wished he might bring her closer and kiss her hard on the lips, like the men in the romances she sometimes read at night, no choice in it but need and want and taking.
But his fingers stayed still, a light pressure denoting only comfort and consolation. She wanted to push up against him and demand so much more, a breathless hunger nearly undoing her. Instead, she moved back, smoothing out her rumpled skirt for something to do before she had to look at him.
‘He is a large man with a lot of money. If he comes here to make trouble …?’
‘He won’t.’
The certainty in Trey’s voice was so comforting. There were, after all, many other things he could have said and to have someone watching out for her was a new experience. A wonderful one! When her glance finally met his she reddened and looked away, his integrity and decency stealing into her bones as delight. She wanted to thank him for such belief, wanted to bring him into the joy of the Christmas preparation that she had spent much time in planning.
‘We are dressing the tree this afternoon, my lord. The children would be happy if you might come and help us.’
‘And you, Miss Moorland. Would you be happy, too?’
Confusion made her stammer. ‘Your h-h-height would be a great aid in placing the angel on the very top of the tree.’
When he smiled she felt her world turn and hated all the hopes that rose unbidden.
Her reputation was lost and she was without a dowry. Her wealth consisted of what she wore, which was far less than satisfactory, a single pearl that did have some worth and a dog who was only now learning to sit still. A hundred pounds, she reasoned, the few notes she owned tucked into her pocket after pawning all her rings and a bracelet—the sum total that stood between her and ruin.
Resolution swept through her. Trey Stanford, the Duke of Blackhaven, could not possibly be interested in her and she could not jeopardise this posting by imagining that he might be. Regaining her lost composure, she smiled at him in the way of an employee who was both professional and distant and excused herself from his company.
Three hours later the smell of pine filled the room as Mrs Thomas brought in a plate of Christmas pies.
‘Baked in the dozens to strengthen their charm,’ she said, ‘and good luck for the twelve months of the New Year, sir.’
Surrounded by red-and-green ribbon, a pile of gold-and-silver paper and balls made from the dry branches of last year’s climbing wisteria, Trey was knee-deep in spangle as he looked at the tree.
Ginger-and-butter shortbread had been strung with twine, the delicacies embellishing an already over-embellished greenery.
Seraphina Moreton had no pattern of demanding the fir dressed in a particular way as Catherine had been wont to on the few times she had bothered. Everything went, according to the governess’s philosophy, so that even the broken offerings the boys had put their hearts into creating took their place alongside the expensive and irreplaceable heirlooms collected by the Blackhaven ancestors for generations.
There was hardly a pine needle still on show and the angel on the top that he had had the task of securing looked down on a hotchpotch of colour.
His children loved it.
‘Have you ever seen such a tree, Papa?’ David asked him and his father shook his head in honesty.
‘Never.’
Seraphina Moreton laughed as he looked over to find her watching him, Melusine jumping at the foil on a lower branch, then nestling in a pile of paper.
‘I like the red apples best.’ Terry pointed out his efforts, three matching misshapen balls with sprigs of gold drunkenly hanging from the top.
As leaves, he supposed. He made much of nodding.
‘The stars are mine, Papa.’ Gareth brought a folded silver shape away from the riot of others behind it. ‘Miss Moorland helped me draw them. I could make some for your library tomorrow.’
‘Indeed.’
‘We have mistletoe as well.’ David took a sprig from a box at his feet and placed it carefully on his hand. ‘Where should we hang it?’
‘Above Miss Moorland,’ Gareth screeched. ‘Then we can all give her a kiss.’
‘Above Papa,’ Terence amended. ‘Then she could give him one.’ His oldest son was already counting as he walked over with the mistletoe.
‘Twelve berries. Twelve kisses. You can have the first one, Papa.’
A vibrant red blush crept up Lady Seraphina’s cheeks, but with three boys baying for a kiss Trey felt it easier to do so. He had meant to place a light peck on her cheek, just a small token to fulfil an expected duty, but he found the soft fullness of her mouth instead and his world exploded.
She felt his finger against her cheek, light as air, question in the last second before his lips slanted against hers, the full force of an unexpected magic making her press in. Trey Stanford was hers for this moment under a tree laden with Christmas and in a world of colour, the taste of him strong and real, his fingers at her nape, the shape of his body full down the front of hers, as a deep pain of need entwined itself into all the corners of her heart. He was neither careful nor gentle nor calm. He was masculine fervour tempered with steel, a man who knew his way around a woman and taking the chance of appetite even with his three children watching on.
Seraphina was breathless when he broke away. Kissing was nothing like she had heard it to be: tepid, shallow and lukewarm. It was hot and ardent and fierce, the meeting of souls through a joining of spirit, a giving and a taking. As amazement bloomed she heard the shouts of the boys and David plucked one berry and threw it in the fire. It sizzled against the embers, a slight puff of smoke and then gone.
When she chanced a quick look at the duke, he seemed unaffected by all that had just happened as he took the mistletoe and placed it above the door-well a good few feet away. He did not look in her direction once.
‘Aunt Margaret and Uncle Gordon should arrive tomorrow. We will surprise them beneath it.’ His voice was even and mellow.
Gareth screwed up his face. ‘No, they are too old to kiss, Papa.’
‘No one is ever too old, my lad. You’ll find that out one day.’
All the boys laughed as Melusine barked, chasing her damaged tail around and around until she caught it, teeth clamped in dark red hair. She had been a quiet dog until she had come to Blackhaven, slinking around beneath the anger of Seth Moreton and the distant haughtiness of the Moreton servants. Here she hardly ever stopped, following the boys from room to room.
The kinder face of chaos, she thought, remembering Trey Stanford’s words about her dog. The Christmas pies Mrs Thomas had made were still warm and the smell of spiced ale drifted in from the kitchen.
Last year she had been alone all of the day, her father asleep with a headache that he had acquired through a late night of gambling and the only food that was special a cake procured a good month before the season began. She had stood at the window of the Moreton town house overlooking the park and thought that she had never been as lonely.
This year the joy of the season shone on the boys’ faces, the decorations they had spent all morning fashioning bright and festive.
And she had been kissed. Her first ever. The throb of it still covered her lips, though she did not dare lift her fingers to touch them in case the duke noticed.
Her glance went to the mistletoe surreptitiously. Eleven berries left! Eleven kisses left! The thought made her blood rush fast.
Trey saddled his horse and rode across the frozen afternoon whiteness towards the river, the same place he often went when he needed to think, the gnarled avenue of bare brown oaks both peaceful and ancient.
He should not have kissed Lady Seraphina, should not have allowed such a thing to happen because now it was all that he could think of, her softness and her warmth and the startling force of energy that had passed between them unbidden.
‘God help me!’ His words to the grey and leaden sky as the consequences of such action unfolded in his head. He wanted to feel again what he just had, the ache of something other than the indifference and inertia that had hounded him for so long in his marriage to Catherine. He had never loved nor even liked his wife. A marriage arranged by his parents and hers to amalgamate the lands around Blackhaven into one solid and powerful block. When he looked to the horizon in every direction the soil was his—paid for in deceit and sham and loneliness.
Catherine had been unfaithful from the first month of their marriage and he should have left then, but David was already on the way and there was some honour in him that he could not just sever.
He had gone to Europe the following year and stayed there until the night Terence was conceived. Gareth was the child of one of her many other lovers when all relations between them had broken down, but he had never told anyone this and raised the boy as his own.
Secrets. How they destroyed one with the bile of anger and disappointment.
And now more secrets, dangerous ones with the weight of the law behind them and a man who was after his own scrambled retribution. Seraphina Moreton would need to be protected and she would require help to win against such a one as the Earl of Cresswell. Her fragility required armour and someone fighting in her corner who did not obey the rules.
Like him.
But how? The kiss under the mistletoe was a start because she must have felt exactly as he did. She had not met his eyes after it and he had not wished to find hers. Some things were better left for the quiet chance of talking later, so that she was not frightened again as she had been in the lurid attempts on her person by Ralph Bonnington.
Promise beat under his musings. He wanted her beneath him, knowing the curves of her body and the scent of her womanhood.
There had been other women since Catherine, he could not deny it. The sweet opiate of forgetfulness was easily procured, even with a ruined face.
But not for a while. It had been months since he had left the county of Essex and he had never liked to bed the local women. Too close to home. Too complicated.
Until now. Until a woman installed in the very centre of his world had whet with a single kiss an appetite long dulled under a sprig of mistletoe and the watchful eyes of his sons.
God in heaven. He swore again, but this time he laughed too. He felt alive again, interested, the ennui that had plagued him for so many years lifted.
‘Seraphina.’ He shouted her name and heard his voice echoed back to him through the barren outcrop of rock and muffled in the deep and thick December snow. It had the ring of salvation.
Mrs Thomas knocked on her door in the afternoon and she held a candle encased in glass because the skies had darkened and rain was threatening.
‘The master asked me to show you the bolts of fabric in the attic, Miss Moorland. He said you might choose some material for a Christmas gown and if we are to have any hope of finishing it we would be best to get on to it as soon as we can.’
The thought crossed Seraphina’s mind that Lord Blackhaven might be regretting his earlier kiss and allowing her some recompense in return for it. She swallowed down such a conclusion and tried to take stock of her situation.
‘I haven’t the means to pay you for the work, Mrs Thomas, and I am not certain yet of the amount of my wages.’
‘Oh, never mind that,’ the housekeeper returned softly. ‘The boys are happier than I have seen them in a long while and that is the best payment I could ever receive. Now, come along and we will see what we can find.’
Ten minutes later Seraphina felt as though she were in some Aladdin’s cave, myriad rolls of fabric leaning against the walls, some still bound in tissue paper but many partly unravelled as if the person who owned them had just been there deciding on her choice of colour.
‘Lady Stanford was a woman who liked a great deal of selection. She was always buying from the travelling salesmen or the gypsies, as well as getting fabric sent up from London. Velvet, as you can see, was a special favourite of hers, and lace. The Brussels lace here cost a right fortune, I can tell you.’
‘Then perhaps I should look at something less costly?’
‘And have the moths burrow their way through this? Nay, the hue will show up the depth in the gold velvet of the gown and would suit the shade of your hair. If we do not cut into it now, it could stay unused for another decade and by that time there would be nothing of it left at all. Save dust. Such a waste.’
Unravelling the bolt, Seraphina felt her breath hitch. Catherine Blackhaven’s taste in fabric was unparalleled and she had rarely seen lace so fine. Still, tempting as the gift was, she wondered at her own ability to pay back the cost of it.
‘The duke said you could have your choice, Miss Moorland. Were it to be mine, I should most certainly select these ones.’ The Brussels lace was in her left hand and the golden velvet in the right.
Without waiting for a reply, she bound the length around Seraphina’s waist. ‘If the skirt was full and the bodice tighter, you could use the lace here and here. Lady Catherine always favoured a scandalously low décolletage, but on you we could fashion a gown in a manner that was more classical.’
Mrs Thomas’s words gave her an opening. ‘The duke’s late wife was a beautiful woman. I saw her in London a few times with my mother.’
‘And the beauty went to her head until it was all that she could think of. It was why the master was in Europe for so long, with a bride who cared for nothing save herself.’
‘But the children?’
As if catching sense, Mrs Thomas shook her head. ‘I am the housekeeper, Miss Moorland, and I should remember my place.’ Winding back the gold so that even more of the colour was on show, she nodded sagely. ‘Blackhaven Castle needs laughter and joy again and if the cost of that is a few yards of fabric, then it comes cheap.’
When Mrs Thomas undid the handles on a sewing bag she had placed on the floor, Seraphina saw scissors, pins and thread, and the promise of a gown that was neither too big nor too tight overcame reticence. With real anticipation she slipped off her old dress and stood in her many-times-patched chemise and petticoats as the measuring and fitting began in earnest.
The wind had died down and the rain had held off, though the clouds were thick and dark above as Seraphina sat on a wooden bench in the ornate inner gardens of Blackhaven as the evening was about to fall.
Reaching out to the bare wood of a bush beside her, she smiled as she touched the vibrant orange of a rosehip, the only colour besides green and black and grey in the snow-tossed square. It was good to be outside at the end of a long and noisy day, the silence of the place welcomed as she tucked her chin into the worsted wool of her borrowed cape.
